Women in Technology

Article:		Objective-C: Dynamite!
Subject:		Intelligent and well-informed
Date:		2003-04-29 00:28:43
From:		anonymous2
This article is the best summary of Objective-C language features I have yet read. Use this as an executive summary when you are trying to win over to Objective-C's (and Smalltalk's) dynamic approach someone firmly rooted in their C++, and be prepared to dismiss all their implementation-level counter-arguments (dispatch performance, type safety). Objective-C is the ideal language for empowering programmers to be productive as very small teams, or individuals.Now that machine performance makes cycle-efficiency a largely redundant consideration, it is simply the right tool for the job. Spread the word!

Showing messages 1 through 8 of 8.

• Intelligent and well-informed
  2003-04-29 10:01:49  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  I agree completely, so much that I am still perplexed by the excision of Objective-C from WebObjects (once upon a time, WebObjects was a serious tool for Web application development that was taken seriously... but one day, the King declared that there would be no more Objective-C in WebObjects and cast all the skilled craftsmen out into the wilds of Java).
  
  Sorry for the somewhat off-topic post, but Objective-C is such a beautiful thing, and this seems to be a great text from which to learn about it, that it just seems a shame that Objective-C can't be used in the place that likely brought it the most commercial success... WebObjects.
• Intelligent and well-informed
  2003-05-01 19:02:33  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  I see your point and raise you. The befifits sound good, but the syntax is very strange to me, especially. [methodCall]. It is almost UML like. Why such a strange syntax??
• [ syntax explaination ]
  2003-05-18 06:44:04  a.langmead [View]
  
  
  When Objective-C advocates say that the language is the addtion of Smalltalk-style objects to the C language, they mean it. In smalltalk square braces create a code block that can be passed around or called.
  
  For example, the chunk of code below will ask object a to compare itself to b and return a True or False object repending on the result. The Boolean object will be sent the ifTrue: message with a block as the argument. The booleans that are instatiated from the 'True' class will execute the block, ones from 'False' will ignore it.
  
  ( a > b ) ifTrue:
  [ Transcript show: 'a is bigger than b'. ]
  
  
• Intelligent and well-informed
  2003-05-07 08:59:27  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  Strange syntax? You find this a STRANGE syntax?
  
  Did you find ! strange for negation?
  
  Or for (;;) strange for an infinite loop?
  
  Perhaps you feel most secure in the cuddly arms of Pascal?
  
  Or what would YOU suggest, Einstein?
  
  (Where do all these lamers come from? Yes, the US, I know that, but more specifically? Gene pool cleaner: Hurry!)
• Intelligent and well-informed
  2003-11-14 20:53:05  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  Yes; good points. If you want something equally "strange" then try Erlang.
  
  Erlang, as I've decided, is just what this distributed world needs.
  
  Erlang looks like PROLOG. Oh my gawrsh!
  
  
• Intelligent and well-informed
  2003-05-02 07:41:55  jdhouse4 [View]
  
  
  Coming from a background in Java and C++, Obj-C at first blush looked like Urdu. At a second glance, it looked like a bad dream. But after a bit of work getting over
  
  -(id)methodName:(Class *) usingThis:(This *) andThisOneToo:(ThisToo *);
  
  as a way of defining a method, it starts to make sense. With a sender-message looking like this,
  
  [pokerPlayer raiseYou:bet giveCard:oldCards getCards: newCards];
  (I don't play poker, so this is likely wrong, but...)
  
  it becomes the easiest language in the world to read. Comments no longer have to explain everything, the method call itself can do allot of that.
  
  You'll find in either AppKit or Foundation that the Class Interface files can be easy to understand. I just had to get past the odd appearance of Obj-C. For me, it has brought back some fun in app development.
  
  I know Obj-C looks a bit strange. But if you really think about it, so did C++ or whatever language you first learned. The difference is that Obj-C will look more "normal" every day you use it until that one day comes when you are looking at C++ or whatever and you'll think that some idiot must have designed those languages to be hard to read, not easy to code.
  
  Just my 2¢ worth.
  
  Jim
• Intelligent and well-informed
  2003-04-29 17:05:10  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  You should look on GNUstepWeb, a free implementation of WebObjects using GNUstep framework. Altough you perhaps already knows it :-)
  
  It lacks documentation, but if you know WebObject it shouldn't be too hard :-)
  
  http://www.gnustepweb.org
• Intelligent and well-informed
  2004-03-04 16:59:51  helge5 [View]
  
  
  Or as another free option, SOPE (also API compatible with WebObjects).
  Actually the OpenGroupware.org application was built using that, probably one of the largest OpenSource Objective-C applications available.
  
  http://www.opengroupware.org/en/devs/sope/index.html
  http://www.opengroupware.org/